


Into Your Mouth I Breathe A Spark

by Phrenotobe



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Courtly Love, Emotional Manipulation, Established Relationship, F/F, No animals or children are harmed, Plegian Cultists (Fire Emblem Awakening), Psychological Torture, SayRikiDay, Time Skips, Uncertain Narration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:21:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 5,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21800866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe/pseuds/Phrenotobe
Summary: “Do you submit to the embrace of Grima, my child?” the priest asks, a cold, pale hand on Say'ri's forehead bringing her out of her daze.“Begone, craven,” Say’ri says, and spits empty air from parched lips.Her god cannot hear her.She’s still calling.
Relationships: Chiki | Tiki/Say'ri
Comments: 18
Kudos: 26
Collections: Tiki/Say’ri Day 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to the musician who remixed MCR and Amy Winehouse as well as my friends, I couldn't have done it without either of you.

Smoke curls in the air. Motes of magic twist in it and dance elegantly, like the story of the dancer who became a butterfly. Purple on one side and black on the other, twisting in lazy irregular spirals. The braziers burn in elegant ceremony, arranged in a dotted line down the aisle. 

It could be beautiful if she wanted it to be. The grand vaulted ceiling of the church rises above her, the wooden roof breaking apart day by day. Too high to fix, and with what wood. The forests nearby have burned. There are tiles scattered across the floor - and the light, beautiful light that strains to meet the floor of the church through the pieces of open sky - is the hazy red orange of a brilliant sunset. 

It is usual for Plegian cultists to desecrate the churches. They smear blood and ashes to call their god into somebody else's home; they burn the offerings and steal gold to melt it. Like Ylissean conquerors before them, they salt what they cannot steal, and they’ve taken on the lessons that King Lowell taught them. These ones are using the space for faith, with candles on every flat space. Where Grima reigns, Naga does not. Naga's hand will not touch here. Grima has pushed her out and shut the door. 

The altar is cold and hard beneath her head, and the sound of water dripping feels close but not close enough to find a direction. Difficult. She relaxes, numb, and lets her eyes defocus. 

They’re experts, these ritualists. They drive the stake through a paralyzed body, awake but half-senseless from the perfumed oils in the air and the drugs burned on the firelight. They can make the blood run slow, keep everything still and cool until their object breaks. They’re waiting for the moment her faith ends and her soul is emptied of Naga’s devotion, when something sour can crawl into her spirit and nest there. She is bleeding, slowly, drip by drip, numb to the pain.

“Do you submit to the embrace of Grima, my child?” the priest asks, a cold, pale hand on her forehead bringing her out of her daze. The drops of water are her blood, the pain is a noise that hums in the back of her head and echoes through all of her nerves. She wants to go back under. If she let go, she could stop breathing and stop feeling. Stop the pain. 

“Begone, craven,” Say’ri says, and spits empty air from parched lips. 

Her god cannot hear her.   
She’s still calling. 

He gestures in the air, a purple mote of smoke carved out of nothing, and catches her jaw, forcing it open. The smoke descends, thick and heavy on her tongue. Her vision widens impossibly, the surface of her eye going solid black. All is flesh and blood. She isn’t here.   
Her mind rolls back to the start.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been a red-skied morning. Say'ri checks the skies warily as she straps her swords to her sides, not comfortable with the weight. Tiki is sleeping still, wrapped around a down pillow. 

An early time of day, close to dawn but feeling like evening. The cold bites down like a dog. She’s glad she’s alone, letting her lady - her friend sleep. Friend? Something else. She puts her hand to her neck and digs out the chain, pulling it up to roll the ring on the loop across her palm and onto the first joint of her thumb. It’s a symbol. 

She's sad to be awake, when Tiki isn't.

Tiki sleeps on Say’ri’s chest. She puts her head there to hear her heart, to calm herself before nightmares start, before pale dogs rest heavy on her ribs, staring into her eyes with nonsensical mouths and too many teeth. 

When Tiki wakes with a cry, Say’ri still saves her, reaching out to stroke her brow, to put her mouth against her temple, the weight of her arm bringing her in to tuck her close to her chest. Now that they’re something else, there’s been a quiet dedication. 

It is not a marriage yet. Body and soul have been bid and accepted in one rash, heartful speech, but the ring on the silver chain around Say’ri’s neck is a promise, not a consummation. She puts it there for safety. Wearing rings on the hand is dangerous, with armor made just so.

Chon’sin noblewomen are meant to keep their lust and longing quiet, and Say’ri is the very picture of Chon’sin sensibility. Say'ri lifts the ring up to shine in the morning light. She wants to be bolder. 

There’s a crew of salvagers going out to the nearest village. There’s no room for excess, forgiveness through Libra’s raised palm for looters in the King’s name. Officially it is important to take what they can; markets only have so much, and Ylisse’s coffers are not endless. Battle made so on a shoestring. Despite her best efforts, it’s been a while since she’s had a new blade. 

Thrift, for victory. Iron on one hip, steel on the other. The weights are different, but she’s trained herself into ambidextry by force of personality and a dogged determination. Iron for risen. Steel for wights. Prayers for the fallen. Songs for the morning. It's simple, broken up like that. 

After the loud clatter of morning mess, the clash and call of morning training, chrom’s personal guard assembles for the tactician’s lecture. The roster is marked out, days for rest and days for work, days to meet Risen and days to train. Say’ri volunteers for sortie often. She has a restless heart, a need to prove her worth. 

“Salvage,” Robin says, checking their list. Say’ri takes a step forward. Lon’qu gives her a sidelong glance, but says nothing, staying still.  
Stahl yawns, moving forward with her. Panne lingers on her back foot, unwilling but not to be outdone. She moves forward. Other soldiers join in, waiting on somebody else to be braver. 

Robin regards their volunteers with a kind smile.  
“Follow me to the tactics tent and I’ll show you the area. We’re passing back through, but I think we’ve got a chance of finding something new.”


	3. Chapter 3

Tiki lifts her hands to touch the soft of Say’ri’s cheeks before she leaves for the day, a blessing and a promise in one that they’ll both do what they can to see the evening together, come what may when they’re apart. Say’ri puts one hand over Tiki’s fingers, pressing her cheek into the curve of Tiki’s palm.  
“I’m glad you’ll still have me,” she murmurs.  
Tiki lifts up on her toes, leaning in. 

“Say’ri?” Chrom asks.  
Say’ri startles, and Tiki breathes a sigh, turning away. 

Say’ri turns to Chrom, surprised by his informality. His tactician lingers by his right hand, never far out of his shadow. He glances at how Tiki tucks into her side, hand in held hand.  
“How may I aid you?” Say’ri asks. She can feel herself growing red, unused to people seeing her being affectionate. There’s no need to hide among friends, but she needs the space for them to be alone together.  
Chrom grins, offering up a blade across his hands.  
“I’ve been looking for you. I think you’d know what to do with this.”  
“Oh,” Say’ri says.  
A short blade, the measure of a hand from palm to fingertip, the handle almost the same length. It's of Chon'sin make, the sheath pattern abruptly broken off and capped on the end with plain wood. A killing edge, cut down to an easier size. She looses from Tiki's grip to receive it in both hands.  
"Are you sure?" She asks.  
“Of course,” Chrom says.  
“Thank you,” Say’ri says, pulling the blade out to look at it, satisfied by the gleam.  
She clears her throat, tucking it behind the metal plate of her belt.  
“Good luck today,” Chrom says.  
“Aye sir,” Say’ri replies, flushing at the casual kindness, “I hope I don’t need it.”  
She turns back to glance at Tiki, giving her a nod.  
“So, then,” she says, not looking away, “is it time to go?”  
“Soon,” Robin says, “We’re meeting out by the high road.”  
Say’ri indicates she’s understood, waiting as Chrom and his tactician leave. 

Tiki moves forward, taking Say’ri’s hand as she turns, bringing her back to being just the two of them. One hand in hers, her other hand over Say’ri’s knuckles.  
“Fight if you need to,” she says, calm and careful, “But come back to me.”


	4. Chapter 4

A broken-down village. The scent of burnt wood still lingers, but there isn't any light from the flame, nor smoke to note the place. They were too late, and even though she knows it isn't the case, Say’ri hopes that they all ran in time. 

Distantly, a dog barks. Something loud, defensive. Desperate. She moves toward the sound in case she can help, but the sound breaks off, and right quick. Iron, then. The monsters wait in the shade of the woods, until day brings down the horizon. 

There's a funny kind of deja vu about the day. She makes good time on the broken path, triangulating the noise. The dog barks again. It isn't right. It wasn't a dog, but a child. The child cries a loud, dissatisfied noise that rings around the houses. The dog barks a reply. The dog is there. The dog is here. 

Say'ri buckles under a wave of nausea, taking a moment to steady herself, creeping to a tall post and leaning heavily. It creaks. The dog barks, darting inside the shelter of the gate. She gets up and staggers on, pulling herself together. The feeling passes. 

The courtyard is blooming grass and cobblestone brick, and the dog - a yearling, still too-big paws and ears and long sticks for legs, disproportionate - creeps out from behind the stone fence and begs for food by her knee as she leans against the wall. She hunts in her purse for a ration, jerky meat in an arc in the air. A loyal follower by her thigh, trotting to heel. 

"And what is your name, brave boy?" Say'ri asks. The dog sneezes. It isn't much of a name. The lightness it brings to her heart doesn't show on her face; she's worried about the child. 

The backstreets are a maze of sheets left to dry in people’s gardens, abandoned to grow ragged on overgrown bushes, the caved-in shapes of back doors covered in scratch marks and final impacts. She walks carefully, counting rows and scratching notches on fenceposts to find her way back to the main road. The dog follows at her knee, long claws clicking on the cobble street. 

It’s been too long since she heard the noise she’s looking for, and the birds have stopped singing. Say’ri pulls out her blade, the dog at her hip flattening his ears to his head. 

Iron. Steel. Risen. Wights. She picks the iron, the weight giving her new purpose, moving into the shadow of the house, the end of the garden path. The flowers are blooming, lavender with no bees to tend it, ragged roses with half-hearted blooms. She advances, one-step, two-step, the sword at the height of her shoulder, held in two hands. 

The door on the house hangs askew on the hinge, a yellow painted wood. The lock is ripped from the socket, rusted and broken across the path by the track of some ignorant, weighty animal. Say’ri breathes in, breathes back out as she nudges the door aside. 

In the gloom of the house there’s a rotten smell, the pungent mask across the nose of rotted onions and potatoes going to seed. It's an orchestra of stench - the spirit-leeching odour of rotten meat, the dusty smell of wet rot, a quiet drip of an unmended tap. A small house, ground and upper floor, a kitchen on the right and a sitting room on the left, claustrophobic and narrow passages between them. Too small for a woman who grew tall from good meat and good air on the sunshine shore of a peaceful kingdom. 

She glances left and moves right, pressed against one wall as she moves. The dog whines in the doorway, unwilling to follow her, even now. Animals know.   
Best if he doesn’t follow.

She rounds the corner of the kitchen, swift into the shape of the first strike as she turns. The slice of kitchen grows wide, a wooden table polished yellow with time and pale wax. A cupboard spilling broom handles and a stringy blackened limb, weathered by time to rot and withered down close to the bone. It’s still, cast in the diamond fall of light from a broken window.   
Her sword hits only air, the step of her foot disturbing the edge of a track made in days-old fallen flour. Say’ri lifts her foot. It’s a very small print. 

She turns around, a messy head of hair tousled up and dusty white daring to show at the top of the stairs. She lowers her blade and it vanishes, and so she puts down her guard to sheathe the weapon. She’ll manage to scout faster with her blade put away. 

She advances through the doorway on the ground floor into a seating room. It’s in disarray, dominated by a fire burned down to ash, grey-white and scattered by footsteps. The carpet by the grate is scorched and flipped up at the edge.

She’s not alone. A woman’s body is hanging out of a chair next to an empty crib, bitten deep down the side of her neck and down her left arm. Her sleeve is ripped open, the wounds black with age and solid with dried blood that welled up after the bite. In another seat there’s a young man, probably barely in his thirties, sitting down in a chair with his eyes closed like he’s sleeping. He’s got a bandaged hand clenched around the arm of his chair, blood dried down one side of his face, seeped into the collar of his shirt. 

Say’ri takes a step back without turning away. A floorboard complains like a bullfrog and she freezes, reaching for a sword-hilt on her waist. She inhales slowly, exhales as she takes in her surroundings, the space around and behind her. Two dead, with no hope of resurrection. A yellow table in the kitchen, broom handles and rotten food, and an empty patch of light on the tiled floor. She could escape at any time, leave through the door with the dog and be back to safety and the quiet of the main road. But she can’t leave so easily. She grips the wooden bannister for strength, ascending the stair, looking for the dusty mote of something living in a rotten house.


	5. Chapter 5

Cold brings her back. One minute at the door of a modest, unused bedroom, the next flinching as a hand touches her forehead. She can’t tell if it is a different priest or the same one as before. Gold gleams around his wrists, the fine chains that link the rings at the base of his fingers to each other across his palms. A woman in a hood next to him waits, receiving a blade painted dull grey and bright gold, dripping red-black. The red has faded above in the gap in the roof, an intense blue nothing with no stars in the sky. She looks away, focusing up, looking for a mote of brightness among the dim. It’s hard to see and harder to focus. 

The priest turns aside, picking up a jar in one hand and drawing in oil on her face, shapes she can’t read, animal fat and ash. He lingers fondly, stroking his thumb between her brows. 

“Do you submit to the embrace of Grima?”  
Say’ri rolls her eyes at him, trying to focus on his face. Shards of his outline turn into fractals around his edges. She half-closes her eyes, but it doesn’t work to bring any new clarity. Stubbornly, she glares at him. It is the only violence she can visit.

“As long as I breathe, I live in Naga’s name.”  
He pats her cheek, infuriating as he acts like a doting father. Were she in control of her limbs he might not have that hand, but even though she twists, fights and pulls, she can’t find a way to get free. His hand lands lightly on her neck.  
“That can be arranged, heretic,” he promises. 

He does not squeeze. Instead his fingertips pull upward, stealing air from her throat. He strokes the air like he’s guiding a puppet on a string, each breath only given at his mercy. She goes dark, clouding in from the edges of her vision.   
When she can see again, he’s still here. 

“Do you submit to Grima?” he asks again.   
She wheezes, airless, a lump in her throat. Another touch to her neck and the block is gone. She draws in air sharply, hungry for it. 

“This will end,” he promises, “By your decision or mine. But if you make the right choice, you could become more powerful than you could ever imagine.”


	6. Chapter 6

Say’ri opens her eyes again. The sunlight is so bright that for a moment it’s too white to see. She lifts an arm and shields her eyes, letting the world adjust. It feels like she’s forgotten something. She turns around, making sense of where she is. 

Say’ri stands in Verona’s main port out to the Ylissean mainland, known informally as Valm Harbour. She’d left the inn that morning, concerned with the fracture in her remaining blade. Guards in Walhart’s red mark are thick through the marketplace, and the ships at dock pack stores for exit, requisitioned from merchant captains. The sailors are moving slowly, disobediently with the Emperor’s orders. 

Out at the horizon there’s a fleet coming in fast. A mess of ships, sails blowing full. Probably Plegian mages and machinery to support Walhart’s rule, from the alliance he brokered three years ago. Say’ri nudges her way through the crowds and further in, toward the shipmaker’s sheds. Her body’s been trained for speed, but her hands can hold a hammer well enough. 

“Full,” the guard on the door says. She’s big and wide, a smile ear to ear, her companion nearby a slim, grim-looking woman from Roseanne’s southern edge. She’s leaning on wooden crates that are stacked up high enough to reach the roof.  
Despite the smile, it’s not friendly.  
“Do you know of anybody who might need a pair of able hands?”  
“Sure,” she says, “come back tomorrow. Be early.”

Up on the wall, a guardsman cries an alert. The slim woman gives her companion a curt nod, moving indoors. A bolt grates into place behind the door. Say’ri rounds the corner without looking back, one of many in the chaos of the harbour. The guardsmen are attempting to keep order. Sailors are moving, fast, unloading what little they’ve placed in the docked holds. A cacophony of business, industry and fear. Say’ri taps her chest to look for the ring on the chain. It isn’t there. Panicked, she spreads her hand to look for it. 

The fleet coming into harbour is on fire, the wind blowing the flames in spirals up every mast. Like the sun is rising from the ocean, the fire licks tongues of flame across the rigging of Feroxi fishing boats, the turned-up prows of Ylissean whalers converted hastily to carry troop. The worn plegian schooners are already sinking, wreathed in hissing flames. 

The crash is an unholy noise.  
Crackling, blistered wood splintering, screeching as it scrapes across the bow of the ships in dock. It doesn’t stop, carried on with inertia to ram into the old wood of the harbour dock. It splinters, and it sounds like a scream. Other ships arrive behind it, guided around to land on the high tide sands. It’s overwhelming, fearsome. The order of Walhart’s men splinter, fleeing. 

Stepping off the ship is the madman’s son from the continent. She's seen the posters that warn his arrival, but his nose is different - an angle, broken twice and not set. White, blue and steel, framed in red. He has a sword like a slab of metal, flanked on two sides by his knights above and beside him. Fearsome, powerful. Something to join or be broken by. A merciless force. 

Sayri’s mouth goes dry, and nausea rises. The crowd flows around her, running to safety, begging mercies of shopkeepers and homeowners. She turns to the beach, facing the ship. 

She moves slowly, carefully, stepping through the crowd as it flows around her. Bodies of the fearful thud into her shoulders, moving like frightened cattle. The world swirls around her; this isn’t how it was, isn’t the man she knows. The beach splits, falls away, and stone walls rise around her. A man in blue drops his red-splashed sword, reaching out his hand in friendship.


	7. Chapter 7

Another frosty morning, and a good-bye to her beloved. Another village, similar but different. At her side, a loyal friend. It feels like moments since she’s last been out on patrol, the weight always present on her hips. Cold bites at her fingers, and there’s a chill she can’t shake that lays over her ribs and won’t go away, like she’s unable to warm back up. The dog by her side lifts his head to touch her fingertips, a wet nose and hot breath and water-repellant fur in curls. The dog of a soldier, not a king. 

It’s all too familiar. The garden, the dying roses, the ragged sheets on the clothesline, the rigging and the sand. The sun goes behind a cloud, covering the scene in gloom. She’s in the bedroom, kneeling to look beneath the bed, beckoning at the eyes in the dark. 

All too late, she feels the step on the floorboard, the dried-out jerky stench of awakened dead, a dropped weight of something that can’t feel touch any more. The Risen is old and dry, wheezing and reaching. It bounces sideways off the frame of the bedroom doorway, catching her while she’s off-guard and scrambling upwards to defend herself. 

No time for a full draw. She reaches for her dagger as it tackles and grabs, in a gross embrace of something dead. Something makes the bile rise in her throat but she concentrates, keeps it down. 

Say’ri scrabbles and scrapes with the dagger, burying it in the spine of the creature and dragging along every jagged notch upwards. Something snaps and something crunches, and she hurls the Risen back toward the wall. The top half of the zombie flops over sideways, teeth snapping uselessly. It still paces forward, swaying slowly as the twitching hands drag and catch at the air.

She kicks out, crashing back against the window, the side of the wall, off-balance as she turns and finds her footing, prepares for more to come. Her hands are shaking, almost dropping the blade. The Risen crumbles, breaking into two halves and dissolving into ash. She tilts her head back against the glass and breathes, sinking to the floor. The child under the bed sniffs as a precursor to tears, starting up an awful howl that rings through the house. She puts her belly on the floor, extending her hand to try again. The ring on the chain around her neck embeds itself into her ribs, reminding her of Tiki’s request to come home. 

“I’m here,” Say’ri says carefully, extending her hand, “I’ll do all I can to protect you.”


	8. Chapter 8

Say'ri awakes, and the lights are out, candles extinguished and still bleeding smoke. Maybe she's been left to die, or abandoned as too much work. Her mouth is dry, her lips cracked. She doesn't know how long she's stayed there. Her hands feel fuzzy, like they've been still too long, losing feeling. Probably bound down to the hooks. Night has finally fallen, the stars shining bigger and brighter than they’ve ever been.

She closes her eyes, and tries to relax. To breathe and just breathe, and listen. It’s no grand defeat, but she didn’t give in. She can forgive herself for that. She focuses on her breath, slow to keep herself calm. She doesn’t admit to herself that she wants to hear the sound of something alive, before- 

There's a sound on the stone floor. The click of a heel, loud like the ring of a bell, an echo down the walkway. A woman wearing pointed heels, taking it slow so she doesn't slip. Say'ri tries to bring up her head but it's too heavy to lift. Static rages in her ears when she tries, her vision going grey at the edges. She has to remember to breathe. 

A cool hand takes her wrist and uncurls the flax rope from the red stripes engraved by the strain of a fight for freedom. Sayri closes her eyes and breathes around the pain. She closes her eyes, turning her head to listen. A gloved hand on her chest, a shift and weight as something alive and warm sits over her waist. 

She cracks an eye open. Light and warmth, somebody she knows, leaning forward. Tiki, making herself comfortable, tapping on Say’ri’s ribs to get her attention.   
“I’m here,” she says, in that soft, dry voice.   
“You’re here,” Say’ri echoes, “Milady, you’re here.”   
She tries to lift her heavy head, her hands to touch her, to see if she’s truly real.   
Tiki giggles, gently nudging her stiff fingers away and leaning in close, so close they’re almost nose to nose. 

Her eyes are like gemstones, glittering brightly in the candlelight, the yellow flames catching the gleam of her green hair. She’s larger than life, perfect and real down to the eyelash. Say’ri reaches again to take her hands to hold, pushed away gently.

“Don’t move,” Tiki says, giving Say’ri’s arm a little pat, “You’ve been hurt. You need to lay still.”   
“The boy,” Say’ri says, “Did you find him? I told him-”  
“Hush, Say’ri,” Tiki says, “You’re going to be fine.”  
“But-”  
“You waited for me,” Tiki whispers, barely a secret in the empty church. The candles sputter, red and green changing to grey and pale and back again.   
“I’ll always wait for you,” Say’ri echoes.   
“Would you always do what I asked?” Tiki purrs, her mouth brushing lightly against Say’ri’s trembling lip.   
“I would try,” Say’ri says. Wet forms in her eyes, blurring the shape of her devotion. A tear falls down her cheek as Tiki turns away, touching a cut on Say’ri’s side that stings and then aches anew as she makes contact. Say’ri hucks, flinching as Tiki’s first and second fingers come back up to show blood, soaking into her gloves.   
“You’ve been so hurt,” Tiki repeats, “You shouldn’t be hurt any more.”   
Say’ri shakes her head for no, transfixed as Tiki brings her bloody fingertips up to her mouth to taste. Tiki’s fingertips press down on Say’ri’s mouth, sweetness and iron against her teeth.   
“Would you embrace me?” Tiki asks.  
Say’ri tries to lift her arms, to hold her, to touch, to take Tiki’s hands. Tiki’s eyes stare unblinkingly into hers, still and waiting.   
“I love you,” Say’ri whispers, for the first time.


	9. Chapter 9

Her eyelids are heavy, and when they open, the room is dark and lit red with the decay of the fires, the ambiance of hot coals burning down. She turns her head slowly, trying to understand the arc of her vision, the chanting, the grind of a knife on a whetstone. Noise fades in and out, pushed away by a ringing in her ears. She’s cold. So cold. A small mercy that the priest isn’t looming. Fie to her swords, she’d rather rip him apart with her teeth. 

“She’s made her choice,” the priest says to the woman beside him, “Bring her to the circle.”   
Say’ri’s head tilts as she listens, recognizing the voice, a troubled frown as she gropes in her memory for context. She closes her eyes and thinks of Tiki, safe at camp among the blankets and pillows that make her nest, and warmth blooms in her chest, a thump like she’s been punched as her heart beats one hard twitch inside her ribs. There’s a long pause before it happens again. Something is wrong. 

“Are you ready?” the cultist asks. She encourages Say’ri up to sit, to turn and stand. Blood flecks the stone floor as Say’ri takes her first wooden step, guided past candles, the sweet-smelling braziers. She turns to reach for one. Bright, captivating colour and sound, the sweetness of roasting meat. Her fingers are blue-tipped and strange, seeking warmth. 

“Come along, you’ll burn yourself.” the cultist says. Something urgent and intangible drags at Say’ri, keeping her on task. She follows as carefully as she can, her eyes fighting to stay open. Another thump inside her chest.   
“Milady,” Say’ri murmurs.   
“What?” the cultist says.  
Say’ri opens her mouth to talk, losing what she was going to say. She sighs.   
“Faster,” the cultist says, “Don’t be late.” 

Out of the church the night is brighter than she’s ever seen it, a new awareness. Every star is too bright, making it look like daylight. The circle is drawn on the ground loosely, the true power held in the iron stakes hammered through the gaps in the stones in the cobbled road. They’re imprinted with shapes Say’ri recognizes, though the meanings are locked up somewhere, behind a wall in her mind she can’t break through. 

She backs away at the sight, animal fear rising up. Terror and instinct makes her fight as she’s pushed forward, another jolt under her ribs. As she stumbles through the gap, the final stake is placed. She raises a hand, unable to beg. 

“Do you obey Grima?”   
Say’ri rattles, uncomfortably cold and unable to shiver.  
The cultist raises her tome, an open hand ready for the final cast.   
“You have been witnessed. By Grima’s will you will be metamorphized.”


	10. Chapter 10

Say’ri flinches awake on the altar.   
“No,” she mumbles reflexively, alone in a lit church, the candles guttering, wax melting fast. The smell of blood is stronger, inescapable, and one of the braziers has fallen, scattering coals and hot ash. The church grows hotter and hotter.   
Say’ri tests her bonds, her hands too weak to grip on and pull. She tries anyway, pretending she doesn’t know about the inevitability of an unrestrained fire.  
"Can't," she wheezes. 

There’s noise outside, crashing steel and the chime of spells cast, and overhead the beleaguered wood of the roof creaks. She pauses, looks up at the red halo sky, tensed to fight before she relaxes. There’s no hint of dawn, no end or beginning. Far off war and fire surround her.  
Nobody is coming.   
She should have known that. 

The church burns and Say’ri waits, listening with half an ear. Sounds from earlier hallucinations drift in - Chrom calling his troop forward, the shouts of sailors, the creak of burning wood, the rush of waves coming in to shore. 

The lead between the glass panes of the windows fizzes and falls inwards, jolting her out of her reverie. Say’ri breathes in deep, coughs sharply. It’s hot, hard to breathe. The ticking clock noise falters and scrapes, more hallucinations as Tiki’s heels sound out on the stone, swift like she’s broken into a run.   
“Not Grima,” Say’ri mumbles, “Just let me go.”   
Tiki appears at her side, reaching toward Say’ri’s face. Say’ri turns away, tired, unwilling. It’s just another unreality.

“You’ve been hurt,” Tiki says, digging her fingers into the bindings at Say’ri’s wrists, “Don’t move, I’ll help you.”  
“Leave me alone,” Say’ri says.  
“I’ve come to help you,” Tiki says, over the noise, “Say’ri, don’t you recognize me?”  
Say’ri lifts up her tired eyes, trying to focus. Tiki, her mass of green hair partially broken from the ribbon, a smear of something dark on her cheek, the sharp of her teeth as her lip curls up and her eyes crease with tears.   
“I loved you,” Say’ri says, lifting her arm up like she’s got the strength to brush her tears away, “I waited for you.”   
Tiki takes her hand and squeezes it, and the world goes dark.


	11. Chapter 11

Say’ri’s skin is ashen, the healthy blush in her cheeks and the red of her mouth vanished to an eerie pale. Tiki puts her head on Say’ri’s chest to listen to her heartbeat, waiting, hoping, listening. Around them the church noisily burns. Say’ri’s heart is quiet.

Grey creeps down over Say’ri’s forehead as magic weaves, tangible gold shimmering and purple tendrils coiling as the soul empties out and something else filters in. Alarmed, Tiki scrabbles backward, reaching to pull off her glove, gripping a translucent scale on one of her knuckles and pulling it hard. It doesn’t give, and she tries again, yanking until tears fall and the scale snaps. Her knuckle bleeds bright red and freely, but she focuses on Say’ri, still gleaming. She takes her slack jaw and opens her mouth, laying the scale on her tongue, closing her mouth back up. It halts the magic tide, slows it to a creeping flicker.

“Come back,” Tiki whispers, “You can’t leave me. Not when I’ve found you.”   
She bends to kiss her, forehead to forehead, first chaste and then again and urgent, breaking away to whisper, asking for clemency from one more loss, a bid for life. The roof cracks, crumbles, and begins to fall. Red-hot lead drips like sparks flying from a fire, rain that hisses on the stone. Tiles drop and shatter, the stones glowing rusty red with the fire’s reflection.

“I love you,” Tiki says, frantic, desperate and pleading, “It isn’t time. It isn’t time.”   
Tiki cups the back of Say’ri’s skull. She puts her mouth to her mouth, her other hand over her heart. She breathes for her, into the cold, the body wracked by hours of unkindness designed to break her down. Under her eyelids, red lights up in the sockets of her eyes.

“Tiki!” Lucina calls from the doorway, “We have to go! It isn’t safe!”   
“Help me!” Tiki shouts back.   
Lucina ducks around the flame, followed by two more who stay in her shadow. Say’ri slides slowly off the altar, leaving an iron stain still red where she lay. Head and arm and legs, carried to safety. A burned-through beam breaks in two, one half falling into the aisle with an almighty crash. 

Out in the courtyard, they lay her down.   
“Tiki,” Lucina says, “I think she’s gone. We need to find someone.”

Tiki shakes her head, kneeling in the light of the burning church. Lucina gives her a nod, turning away to look for the others. 

“You promised you’d come back,” Tiki says. She tries one last time, a hand on her heart, the shape of a ring beneath her palm underneath Say’ri’s clothes. She brings her head down, urging breath into her lungs, a living spark. The ring burns with warmth, colour spreading through the ash of Say’ri’s skin. All is still, from heart to face to fingertip. 

Say’ri twitches like a thundershock, and Tiki backs away as she sits up and heaves, dry and empty. She lays back down again in the grass, staring up at the sky. 

“Tiki,” Say’ri murmurs, “Are you really there?”   
Tiki shuffles close to her, taking her hand. A golden ring sits on Tiki’s third finger, brazen over her glove. She holds her hand tight, helping her rise to sit.   
“Yes, Say’ri,” she says, “You’re safe. I’m sorry I couldn’t find you in time.”  
Say’ri’s voice is rough, agitated by how she’s been treated. But she dips her head to lay a kiss on Tiki’s hand, folding her own over the top of Tiki’s knuckles. Though tired, though weary, she has a smile just for her.  
“It was a long time there. Days and days of remembered pasts. And all came back to you.”


End file.
